She's by way of being called a manner of hard names by some people. I do not see it myself. It is a matter of conscience. If you would ask some interested, they would call her a smuggler, a thief, a wrecker, and all the other evil titles in the catalogue. She has taken in Chinks by way of Santa Cruz Island—if that is smuggling. The country is free, and a Chink is a man. Besides, it paid ten dollars a head for the landing. She has carried in a cargo or so of junk; it was lying on the beach where a fool master had piled it, and I took what I found. I couldn't keep track of the underwriters' intentions."
"But the room forward?" I broke in.
"Well, you see, last season we were pearl fishing."
"But you needed only your diver and your crew," I objected.
"There was the matter of a Japanese gunboat or so," he explained.
"Poaching!" I cried.
"So some call it. The shells are there. The islands are not inhabited. I do not see how men claim property beyond the tide water. I have heard it argued"
"Hold on!" I cried. "There was a trouble last year in the Ishigaki Jima Islands where a poacher beat off the Oyama. It was a desperate fight."
Captain Selover's eye lit up.
"I've commanded a black brigantine, name of The Petrel," he admitted simply. "She was a brigantine aloft, but alow she had much the same lines as the Laughing Lass." He whirled on his heel to roll to one of the covered yacht's cannon. "Looks like a
